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<TITLE>Magic-8.3 Command Reference</TITLE>
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<H2>help</H2>
<HR>
Print out synopses for all commands valid in the current window (or
restrict output to those containing the indicated pattern)
<HR>

<H3>Usage:</H3>
   <BLOCKQUOTE>
      <B>help</B> [<I>pattern</I>] <BR><BR>
      <BLOCKQUOTE>
         where <I>pattern</I> is any keyword or text string.
      </BLOCKQUOTE>
   </BLOCKQUOTE>

<H3>Summary:</H3>
   <BLOCKQUOTE>
      The <B>help</B> command invokes the built-in help function in
      <B>magic</B>, which lists the summary usage information that
      has been compiled into magic for each command.  The summary
      help information is usually only a single line of text.
      Commands that have complicated sets of options have their
      own <B>help</B> option, which is not part of the <B>help</B>
      command. <P>

      Without arguments, <B>help</B> reports a summary usage for
      every command in magic.  With arguments, magic filters the
      output to report only those commands matching the indicated
      text <I>pattern</I>. <P>

      The output is divided into
      general-purpose and window-specific sections.  The window-specfic
      section depends on the active window.  For instance, with a
      single layout window present, <B>help cleanup</B> returns no
      information.  However, the command <B>specialopen netlist</B>
      followed by <B>help cleanup</B> will report the usage of the
      command <B>cleanup</B>, which is a command that can only be
      invoked from the netlist window. <P>
   </BLOCKQUOTE>

<H3>Implementation Notes:</H3>
   <BLOCKQUOTE>
      <B>help</B> is implemented as a built-in command in <B>magic</B>.
      Note that there is no general-purpose command-line-based help
      method for Tcl commands, so the <B>help</B> command will not
      provide any information about magic commands written as Tcl
      procedures, such as <B>openwrapper</B> or <B>pushstack</B>.
      The general convention is for each Tcl procedure to allow the
      option <B>help</B> and provide its own usage information.
   </BLOCKQUOTE>

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<P><I>Last updated:</I> March 7, 2020 at 1:06pm <P>
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